Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) Shares Up 5.4% – Should You Buy?

Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW)’s stock price traded up 5.4% on Wednesday . The company traded as high as $170.47 and last traded at $169.7410. 12,613,062 shares changed hands during mid-day trading, an increase of 101% from the average session volume of 6,262,440 shares. The stock had previously closed at $161.06.

Key Snowflake News

Here are the key news stories impacting Snowflake this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Snowflake announced a multi‑year $200M alliance with OpenAI, positioning its Cortex AI platform to run OpenAI models on customer data — a concrete tie to the AI growth story investors want to see. Snowflake Leans On OpenAI Alliance
• Positive Sentiment: Institutional mention: Aristotle’s Growth Equity Fund highlighted Snowflake as a leading data‑cloud platform in its Q4 letter — a vote of confidence from an active manager. Aristotle Growth Equity Fund Letter
• Neutral Sentiment: Earnings preview: Q4 results are due after the close and coverage emphasizes one key metric — remaining performance obligation (RPO) — as the signal for whether AI-driven demand is materializing. Traders are watching guidance and RPO closely. RPO Is Key for Snowflake AI Transition
• Neutral Sentiment: Pre‑earnings analyst activity: several outlets report Wall Street firms have revised models and price targets ahead of the print — increasing volatility risk into the event. Analyst Expectations Revamped
• Negative Sentiment: Legal overhang: multiple law firms have issued investor notices and announced investigations / class‑action filings alleging claims tied to earlier disclosures for purchases between June 27, 2023 and Feb 28, 2024 — increasing uncertainty and potential future liabilities. Examples: Robbins LLP, Rosen Law, Bernstein Liebhard, Johnson Fistel, and Pomerantz. Robbins LLP Investor Notice
• Negative Sentiment: Analyst downgrades and sell activity: recent notes and fund moves cite valuation concerns; at least one analyst downgrade and reports that Artisan’s Mid‑Cap fund sold its SNOW position (valuation cited) add downward pressure. Analyst Downgrade / Fund Selling

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research firms recently commented on SNOW. Piper Sandler reiterated an “overweight” rating and issued a $285.00 price target on shares of Snowflake in a research note on Thursday, December 4th. Stifel Nicolaus dropped their price objective on Snowflake from $280.00 to $225.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Monday. The Goldman Sachs Group reduced their target price on Snowflake from $286.00 to $246.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, February 11th. Cantor Fitzgerald reissued an “overweight” rating and set a $250.00 price target on shares of Snowflake in a research report on Monday. Finally, Argus raised shares of Snowflake from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $300.00 price target on the stock in a report on Thursday, January 8th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-three have assigned a Buy rating, four have assigned a Hold rating and three have issued a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $265.63.

Snowflake Trading Up 5.4%

The company has a current ratio of 1.37, a quick ratio of 1.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.07. The company has a market cap of $58.09 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -42.02 and a beta of 1.14. The firm has a 50-day moving average price of $201.94 and a 200 day moving average price of $223.46.

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, February 25th. The company reported ($0.80) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.26 by ($1.06). Snowflake had a negative return on equity of 45.91% and a negative net margin of 30.76%. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that Snowflake Inc. will post -2.36 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling at Snowflake

In related news, EVP Christian Kleinerman sold 10,000 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $249.53, for a total transaction of $2,495,300.00. Following the sale, the executive vice president owned 512,450 shares in the company, valued at $127,871,648.50. This represents a 1.91% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, SVP Vivek Raghunathan sold 11,801 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, December 31st. The stock was sold at an average price of $220.44, for a total transaction of $2,601,412.44. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president directly owned 218,020 shares in the company, valued at $48,060,328.80. This represents a 5.13% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 713,681 shares of company stock valued at $148,264,518. Corporate insiders own 6.80% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of Snowflake

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its position in Snowflake by 5.1% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 30,095,687 shares of the company’s stock valued at $6,601,790,000 after purchasing an additional 1,448,094 shares during the period. Jennison Associates LLC increased its position in Snowflake by 27.7% in the fourth quarter. Jennison Associates LLC now owns 11,603,302 shares of the company’s stock worth $2,545,300,000 after buying an additional 2,519,413 shares during the period. State Street Corp lifted its stake in Snowflake by 1.4% in the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 6,887,073 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,541,120,000 after buying an additional 94,293 shares during the last quarter. Nuveen LLC lifted its stake in Snowflake by 2.3% in the fourth quarter. Nuveen LLC now owns 5,277,851 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,157,749,000 after buying an additional 116,521 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Artisan Partners Limited Partnership boosted its holdings in shares of Snowflake by 15.2% during the second quarter. Artisan Partners Limited Partnership now owns 4,951,715 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,108,045,000 after acquiring an additional 652,485 shares during the period. 65.10% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

About Snowflake

Snowflake Inc is a cloud-native data platform company that provides a suite of services for storing, processing and analyzing large volumes of data. Its core offering, often described as the Snowflake Data Cloud, combines data warehousing, data lake and data sharing capabilities in a single managed service delivered across major public cloud providers. The platform is designed to support analytics, data engineering, data science and application workloads with a focus on scalability, concurrency and simplified administration.

Key products and capabilities include a multi-cluster, shared-data architecture that separates compute from storage; continuous data ingestion and streaming; support for structured and semi-structured data formats; tools for data governance, security and compliance; and developer frameworks for building data applications.